Structural Performance Assessment of Innovative Hollow Cellular Panels for Modular Flooring System

Lightweight modular construction has become an increasing need to meet the housing requirements around the world today. The benefits of modular construction ranging from rapid production, consistency in quality, sustainability, and ease of use have widened the scope for the construction of residential, commercial, and even emergency preparedness facilities. This study introduces novel floor panels that can be flat-packed and built into modular housing components on-site with minimal labour and assistance. The flooring system uses hollow cellular panels made of various configurations of trapezoidal steel sheets. The structural performance of three different configurations of these hollow flooring systems as a modular component is presented in this study by analysing the failure modes, load-displacement parameters, and strain behaviour. The study confirms significant advantages of the proposed hollow floor systems, with multi-cells reporting higher load-carrying capacity. The hollow flooring system performed well in terms of structural performance and ease in fabrication as opposed to the conventional formworks and commercial temporary flooring systems. The proposed flooring system promises efficient application as working platforms or formworks in temporary infrastructural facilities and emergency construction activities.

Construction sustainability of container-modular-housing in coastal regions towards resilient community

PurposeThis paper addresses housing problems of coastal areas in Bangladesh and investigates container-modular-housing (CMH) as a potential sustainable solution that establishes a resilient community.Design/methodology/approachPrimary data highlight the underlying challenges of coastal-housing developed by monitoring the day-to-day operations of the community and conducting interviews with community members. Secondary data came from existing literature on coastal-housing rules and regulations, CMH and similar ideas. The study used a hypothetical CMH cluster design, with three primary objectives in mind: future settlement re-arrangement, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability. To achieve the objectives, the research used a comparative examination of the current constructed form and CMH, as well as a computer-aided simulation approach.FindingsPrimary findings encompass issues of a given coastal area, including surrounding site studies, sustainability and resiliency demands due to broad exposure to the natural calamities. Driving toward a “CMH” based home design has the ability to create strategies for a resilient and sustainable community development while taking three primary objectives into account.Research limitations/implicationsA pilot project is needed to analyze the socio-cultural impact and overall construction feasibility.Practical implicationsThis research could be implemented to transform an informal construction system into a technical, resilient, sustainable architectural and engineering solution to build resilient communities.Originality/valueNumerous research projects have focused on the environmental sustainability of CMH. However, this study focuses on construction sustainability considering three major aspects which are yet to be addressed.

A new stage in the development of housing construction

The perspective development of large-modular housing construction is considered as an important area of a significant increase in the pace and volume of housing construction. The analysis of the manufacture and use of blocks used for container mobile buildings for industrial and auxiliary purposes, as well as aggregated blocks for complete block construction of oil and gas facilities is given. The types of block modules of large-scale residential buildings and the technological sequence of their installation are indicated. The problems of transportation of block modules and mechanization of their lifting and installation in the design position are formed and analyzed, and the ways of their solution are revealed.